The word of Bob

Winterbottom's view from the front

BRITISH DIRECTOR Michael Winterbottom sat sock-footed and relaxed as he readied himself to screen his ambitious Welcome to Sarajevo at this past September's Boston Film Festival. Certainly, I figured, the comforts of a first-class hotel in Boston must seem worlds away from the war torn ravages of Sarajevo.

"Not really," the unassuming auteur insisted. "For me, going to Sarajevo was not that dissimilar from being in London, New York, or Boston. People listen to the same music. It's a big university town. It's a very modern, sophisticated European city."

Winterbottom's saga details the outset of the siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serbs through the eyes of a British journalist (Stephen Dillane) who sheds his professional agenda and becomes involved in the lives of the very people he is there to observe. "Journalists are people who see things," the director points out. "They are all there trying to get the story. But a lot of British journalists came back very committed to Sarajevo, emotionally involved in the story, like [Michael] Nicholson [the journalist, whose chronicles the movie is loosely based on], and many of them campaigned for the government to do something about it."

Winterbottom opines that even though reporters worked arduously to relay news of the heinous war crimes around the globe, the West was slow, almost complacent, in reacting. "During the war, many of the people in Britain viewed it as the Balkans, where all these weird people were always fighting each other in ethnic struggles that had been going on for hundreds of years. When we met Sarajevans, they were saying that was bullshit. Everyone lived in Sarajevo as Sarajevans. Nobody cared about what ethnicity or religion you were."

In the process of making the film Winterbottom experienced an awakening much like Nicholson's. To prepare for the filming and to cull archive footage, he watched hundreds of hours of newsreels. "The more you watch, the more terrible it seems. The more emotionally involved you get seeing it." But that didn't desensitize him to what he would discover. "You know what had gone on, but it's still an incredible shock arriving [in Sarajevo]. On the first day, we drove down Snipers' Alley and there was all this incredible destruction."

Even Hollywood star Woody Harrelson, who plays a rogue American journalist, was taken in by the city's plight. "Woody was incredibly popular. He was great. We'd be trying to film, and suddenly we'd have to sign 50 autographs. He got very involved and went around places and met people and tried to find out about things. I don't know what ever happened with it, but he was developing a line of hemp clothes in connection with Sarajevo. I think to raise money for the Bosnian Embassy in America."

Although they arrived just a month and a half after the UN forces had brought about peace, filming in Sarajevo was not as dangerous as you might have imagined. Winterbottom and his crew found it an extremely enjoyable place to work. "We got a lot of cooperation from the people there. It's a beautiful place. A lot of the people who worked on the film were Croats and Serbs, and none of them cared what the [ethnic] impact was." Yet though there was no sniper fire to contend with, the production was not without peril. "The only real danger was land mines. We filmed in areas that weren't cleared, so we had to have mine-removal crews."

In Winterbottom's estimation, Sarajevo is now a relatively stable place to live, but one that desperately needs aid. "People feel like things could get better, will get better. The people are very proud of Sarajevo. There is an enormous amount of destruction. What they need is investment from the West to rebuild. During the war people were only thinking about surviving. Now that the war is over, they don't have jobs or money."

-- T.M.

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